Institute for Community Entrepreneurship & Development

The mission of ICED is to provide opportunities for members of Aboriginal, Black, ethnic and immigrant communities to acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to improve their situation as well as the economic and social conditions in their communities. ICED achieves its mission by engaging key representatives and organizations within these communities, conducting research and providing managerial tools and training that will facilitate social and economic development.

Program approach

In our programming, we strive to put the needs of the clients first. Our delivery style has to be, and is very culture specific and sensitive to the motivational context of the communities concerned. Understandably, we are not dealing with mainstream education for life in the corporate fast track, our regular programs provide for those needs. We are dealing with community development as perceived and pursued by the client communities. Our intention is to provide managerial tools and training that will facilitate that development. There is a social purpose to what we do, in the sense that we seek to ensure that the social benefits of our initiatives far exceed the private costs of providing the service to these communities.

We have adopted a team approach to providing the training components of the program. Professors are encouraged to learn about the client communities and the particularities of their cultures and position in Quebec and the rest of Canada. They are required to work as a team in the collection and preparation of materials for the course manuals and in the presentation of the courses.

The client communities provide valuable inputs for the development of the course material; evaluate the delivery in the classroom as well as the degree of comfort or feeling of being in a welcoming environment. The impact of the courses on "how work is done" in the respective communities is assessed in post course discussions between the program and representatives of the client communities.